Team Culture

Team culture: the formal and informal rules a group makes to solve problems and get things done

Team culture is one of the biggest factors determining the collective success or failure

Culture is a set of guidelines controlling behaviour.

e.g. we communicate using memos (not powerpoints)

High performing teams are explicit about culture, because they know if they don’t activily shape their culture, one will form anyway (which might not be the one they want)

Team manifesto

Are you clear on the formal and informal rules you are going to follow

Goals: Getting SMART

Goals are one of the most important rules you can make on a team

Goals answer the question: “Why are we working together?”

Some people believe it’s enough to have an inspirational vision (e.g. “We’re going to have the best product”)

Vision is important because it creates passion, but if you don’t connect the vision with reality through specific goals, the vision will fizzle out

How can you create goals that get results? Use SMART and WIIFM.

SMART:

Specific (focus on what really matters)

Measurable (no confusion over whether goal has been achieved)

Achievable

Relevant

Timely

Teams that create SMART goals are better able to fulfill their big visions

Goals: Answering the WIIFM Question

WIIFM: What’s in it for me?

CEO: walked around asking everyone “What was your proudest moment?”. He was looking to see that his strategic goals aligned with their interests.

Any group, project or task we’re a part of has to fulfill some sort of personal goal or need for us, otherwise we disengage and lose commitment.

Setting team collective goals need to consider the individual’s goals, and how the shared goals can contribute to them.

Extrinsic motivations: you do a task because of external reasons

(e.g. financial incentives)

Recognition

Intrinsic motivation: you find the task interesting or enjoyable in it’s own right

Impact is important. e.g. Connection to customers

Learning a new skill or role

You can head off motivation issues in your own team by asking the WIIFM question as soon as your team forms

Team Roles

A persons’ role is who they are, and what their responsibilities are.

Roles answer the question: what do we do?

It’s important to define clear roles for each person on the team.

One way to do this: RACI matrix

Responsible: directly involved in doing the task or carrying out the project

Accountable: delegates work to those who are responsible, and approves major decisions

Consulted: gives advice and ideas as needed

Informed: kept up to date on what is happening

Interdependent roles: the reason for needing a team (otherwise individuals would suffice).

Who else do I need to work with to get this done?

Setting Norms for Communication, Decision-making and Conflict

Norms: shared understanding of how a team works together

Goals: why we work together

Roles: what we do

Norms: how we work together

Norms for communication. Need to consider

format

communicating a message in the wrong medium can lead to miscommunication and bad results

e.g. “enthusiastic” exclmation point in email might be interpreted as anger or agression by the recipient.

In face to face, emotion is mainly communicated by body language and tone of voice. The words themselves don’t communicate emotion effectively.

Team can list all the “needs” for communcation (e.g. project updates, budget reviews, team check-ins, etc), list all the communcation channels (e.g. email, phone, meetings, instant messages), and then match them together

frequency

Face to face meetings are good for communcation, but they take a lot of time.

Norms for decisions. Need to consider

What decisions can be made by individuals?

What decisions need to be made by the whole team?

What process will the team use to make decisions?

Total concensus approach

Have the leader decide

Concensus with leader’s final approval (middle approach)

Even if a team member disagrees with a decision, they’ll be more likely to go along with it, because they consider the process to be fair